scmbradley

Boring tech guy. Former professional philosopher.

Unremarkable cis-het middle-class able-bodied white guy. He/Him.

Irish/British. Currently living in Leeds. Former resident of Luxembourg, Germany and Netherlands.

This toot will self destruct in one month.

Website: https://scmb.xyz
Bookwyrm: https://bookwyrm.social/user/scmbradley

Public Key

npub1uexlydgrvzrau995rnqna9sq8r6nrd5ahemywx2u5jf3k470rrtsejeg2p

NIP-05 Address

scmbradley_at_mathstodon.xyz@momostr.pink

Profile Code

nprofile1qqswvn0jx5pkpp77zj6pesf7jcqr3af3k6wmuaj8r9w2fycm2l8334cpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0ds8vcwcv

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Author Public Key

npub1uexlydgrvzrau995rnqna9sq8r6nrd5ahemywx2u5jf3k470rrtsejeg2p

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Last Notes

2026-03-04 10:33:23 UTC

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I am taking recommendations for big silly switch-off-brain action movies. What have you got for me?

2026-03-04 09:58:30 UTC

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I've actually decided I want to watch action movies. So I'm starting with the Running Man remake.

2026-03-04 06:56:50 UTC

I'm taking the day off work because I feel terrible with flu. I'm going to watch TV all day. What should I watch? Stargate SG1 is kn Netflix now so that's an option. I think I can buy or rent battlestar Galactica or Babylon 5....

2026-03-01 13:54:54 UTC

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dates for when various countries were founded. A lot of them are surprisingly recent.

2026-03-01 13:46:28 UTC

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Gutenberg and his moveable type press (not the first, but extremely important an event nevertheless).
Luther and the 95 theses.
Columbus' voyages to the new world.
Arthur Conan Doyle.
Robert Louis Stevenson.
Charles Dickens.
Emily Bronte.
Jane Austen.
Mary Wallstonecraft.
Mary Shelley.
You could have indicators for longer eras. So for example, the height of the Aztec empire, various other civilisations in the Americas. Or for various influential dynasties in China.

2026-03-01 13:25:00 UTC

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for events rather than people: the reign of terror. Which explains why several famous French mathematicians and scientists died in 1794.

2025-08-21 15:54:55 UTC

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conversely, there's nothing stopping you creating aliases like alias list-files=ls
But I do kind of agree. I think if I'd learned powershell first, I would find bash annoying in lots of ways. But it's what I'm used to now...

2025-08-20 15:58:54 UTC

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this feels like a question @npub1xcd…yvjh might have an answer to.

2025-07-12 11:05:58 UTC

Was reminded of this paper a minute ago, and I just read it again. Damn, Edsger Dijkstra weirdly relevant for a 40 year old paper.
"The question [of whether machines can think] is just as relevant and just as meaningful as the question whether submarines can swim."
"if computers could amplify intelligence, they could amplify stupidity as well."
"The most crazy thing of all this is that, in all the more spectacular cases, the failure has been predicted, quite convincingly and well in advance. Apparently, the lure of the dream is still so strong that people become to deaf for warnings: the computer represents Babbage’s Dream Come True, and no one wants to hear that the Dream has deteriorated into a fully transistorized nightmare."
"I refer to the wide-spread, but in general unchallenged, belief that making something “computer-aided” amounts to making it better. Computer-aided design, computer-aided management, computer-aided composition, computer-aided manufacturing, computer-assisted learning, computerized examinations, you name it. Under no circumstances the dogma of improvement should be accepted without challenge: in no time we would have computerized jurisdiction."
https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD08xx/EWD867.html

2025-06-18 17:42:10 UTC

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simply blog about the article, and use that as the citation for Wikipedia.

2025-06-11 20:16:15 UTC

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this one in particular is hurting my brain
https://media.mathstodon.xyz/media_attachments/files/114/666/563/799/226/792/original/86f93d91979673eb.png

2025-06-11 20:01:35 UTC

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how long until we have custom emojis of them?

2025-06-10 11:50:09 UTC

Close up picture of a pirate: buccaneer
Picture of pirate from a distance: buccafar

2025-04-17 22:53:15 UTC

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I have read atlas shrugged, and I read the first wizard book in German (I was living in Munich at the time). Aun rand made me think. (I thought wtf)

2025-04-08 12:41:57 UTC

Folks, I'm turning 40 later this year and I need some tips about what's a good midlife crisis. I'm not keen on your classics like get divorced, buy a fast car or take up golf, so I'm looking for alternatives? I'm thinking maybe start a podcast?

2025-03-25 21:31:12 UTC

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Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should

2025-02-23 21:05:53 UTC

Aristotle: know yourself.
Buddha: no "yourself".

2025-01-30 17:16:24 UTC

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yeah I think there is a narrow legal meaning of plagiarism where use of public domain works doesn't fit, but theres a broader understanding of plagiarism. Outside of a school context, If somebody uploaded a short story that was a very light edit of a public domain work, under their own name. Have they committed plagiarism? Legally speaking no. Have they still done something shitty in taking credit for someone else's work? Yes. Does it make sense to call this plagiarism? Maybe? Do LLMs fall afoul of this broader understanding of plagiarism? Arguably yes.
It's a sort of "taking credit for others' work" sense of plagiarism that I think still applies.

2025-01-30 17:04:46 UTC

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if a student wrote an essay that just lifted chunks of a public domain work without attribution, that would be plagiarism. If the same student used the same text but signalled properly that it was a quote and cited it correctly, that would not be plagiarism. Plagiarism is not just about the *use* of some text, but the context in which that text is being used.

2025-01-29 18:15:19 UTC

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a macroblog platform with per-paragtaph comments is a pretty neat idea.

2025-01-26 22:40:08 UTC

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room rental at the barbers. HairBnB

2025-01-22 15:42:07 UTC

Tired: marketplace of ideas
Wired: repair cafe of ideas

2025-01-22 07:28:04 UTC

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it feels like such a wasted opportunity to have lived through a period of very low interest rates and not borrowed to replace aging infrastructure. Any rebuilding we do now will cost a lot more than it would have done in, say, 2015.

2025-01-16 12:25:36 UTC

I'm not going to read the article, but I'm going to crowdsource what my opinion of him should be now.
Neil Gaiman is a:

2025-01-03 15:21:39 UTC

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additional fifth poll options: I've not played it but I've bookmarked this toot so I can play it once I'm on my laptop.

2025-01-03 11:32:04 UTC

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here's my phone camera's crap picture
https://media.mathstodon.xyz/media_attachments/files/113/764/196/270/181/998/original/872929d1a304152c.jpg

2025-01-03 11:30:47 UTC

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I also saw the moon and an incredibly bright star last night! My wife thinks it was probably Venus or Jupiter.

2024-12-31 16:53:57 UTC

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I do this! I have bought books about the science of cooking specifically so I can reverse engineer why the recipe says to do what it says...

2024-12-30 17:10:04 UTC

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one example of that last point was that I sometimes thought about whether to CW posts announcing I'd given blood. But like, "CW blood" is probably worse than just "I gave blood!".

2024-12-29 14:16:21 UTC

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Decoration goals
https://media.mathstodon.xyz/media_attachments/files/113/736/533/305/687/983/original/70da44062e79917d.jpg

2024-12-29 14:13:00 UTC

Here's a #leeds / #harrogate specific post. Just been to Harewood House. The Christmas decorations are great. Lots of thought and effort put into the set up of the house.

2024-12-24 12:49:17 UTC

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Recipes should come with a Gantt chart.

2024-12-23 16:14:09 UTC

I'm looking at this recipe that says "cook this for an hour, meanwhile do this for 15 minutes and then stir in the thing that took an hour", and like, if you followed it without thinking about it, you have step 2 done way too early! It should say "wait half an hour" in between the steps...

2024-12-18 15:31:31 UTC

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"one of your guys" is such an amazing phrase in this context. Performance art.

2024-12-08 18:38:25 UTC

I know what people mean when they say "there's no algorithms on the fediverse" but uh that's just not true? Like, something's fetching the messages from a database, how do you think SELECT works? It's not fucking magic is it? How is the text displayed on your screen? Are the letters dumped out at random or is there some sort of procedure determining where the letters and words go?
This is mostly me being pedantic, but it's also partly me trying to reclaim the word algorithm. Algorithms aren't inherently bad. We wouldn't get far with our computing without them.

2024-12-08 16:28:48 UTC

Lazyweb: if I want to play around with generative art, is processing.org a good option, or are there better choices? Searching for generative art brings up a lot of AI bullshit, and even the pages that do seem to be about creative coding mostly talk about nft bullshit.
Is Nannou any good? What other options are there?

2024-12-05 20:45:16 UTC

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well, theres a bond movie where Christopher Walken plans to set off a bomb to cause an earthquake under silicon valley. That's the closest to accurate information I have available right now.

2024-12-01 19:56:43 UTC

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also if the former, is it mad skills specifically for science, or is it skills in mad science?

2024-11-26 08:18:39 UTC

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I wonder if there's an automated or somewhat automated way to turn these into monochrome variants?

2024-11-16 19:14:01 UTC

Concept: multiplayer FPS where you have a hookshot and there's no gravity. You just zoop around the arena trying to shoot your opponents in midair.

2024-11-14 16:00:26 UTC

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it's like... the original thing Austin Powers was making fun of was... sillier than the parody?

2024-11-06 22:21:15 UTC

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Calling a friend seems quite a different kind of activity from scrolling social media. One that would be appropriate in different contexts? This was supposed to be a list of things you could do in those situations where you might otherwise pull out your phone and doomscroll. The idea is that these are effectively "drop in" replacements for that activity. Calling a friend just seems like a different activity you could also do instead, in some but not all circumstances?

2024-11-06 09:45:19 UTC

A propos of nothing in particular, here's a list of things you could do on your phone instead of being on social media. https://www.scmb.xyz/post/instead-of-doomscrolling/

2024-10-29 23:08:54 UTC

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blow me like one of your french horns

2024-10-24 06:43:46 UTC

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it blew my mind to learn tomatoes are a new world crop that didn't exist in Europe before the 16th century. What did medieval Italians make their pasta sauces out of!?

2024-10-10 09:16:15 UTC

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If somebody started a single issue political party whose platform was "double the salaries of nurses and teachers" I would consider voting for them.

2024-10-09 11:26:41 UTC

Lol at the Nobel prize committee just going completely fucking rogue and giving the physics AND chemistry prizes to computer science.
Looking forward to the literature prize going to the inventor of LLMs or whatever.

2024-10-06 19:31:16 UTC

Important news. Laptop ladybird.
https://media.mathstodon.xyz/media_attachments/files/113/262/133/301/429/904/original/033d325ce66688ff.jpg
https://media.mathstodon.xyz/media_attachments/files/113/262/133/354/698/997/original/3b351b1185bd2c2a.jpg
https://media.mathstodon.xyz/media_attachments/files/113/262/133/317/332/099/original/9c38ce6865a3c34a.jpg

2024-08-31 13:19:24 UTC

Good luck to all the oasis fans, hope you all get tickets to your midlife crisis show.